Sequence analysis of the fusion protein gene of Newcastle disease virus isolated from breeder ducks in Korea

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Newcastle disease (ND) is an infectious poultry disease that caused high mortality and reduced egg production. NDVs are regularly present in the domestic duck population. And ducks play a possible role in the maintenance and transmission of NDVs. While we were monitoring the Avian Influenza, NDVs were isolated from field samples by accident. So we analysed the biological and genetic characteristics of these viruses. Lentogenic NDVs were isolated from two farms among twenty breeder duck farms. The ages of ducks were 39 weeks old in the 'A' farm and 3~72 weeks old in the 'B' farm. And they were not inoculated with the NDVs vaccine. In the biological characteristics, the both viruses which separated from the farm 'A' and 'B' were thermostable. The amino acid sequence of a site from 112 to 119 in the fusion (F) protein was 'GKQGRLIG' which has monobasic motif in the samples of both farms. And this means the separated NDVs are lentogenic. Phylogenetic analysis was performed by entire nucleotide sequence of F protein. The virus strains from the A farm (MN095239) and the B farm (MN095240) belonged to class II genotype I. Using the analysis of whole F protein nucleic acid sequence, the MN095239 (GenBank) had homology with Ulster strain about 99.95% and the MN095239 (GenBank) had homology with KR/CK/KU_LBM255/09 strain about 99.89%. NDV surveillance is needed to investigate epidemiological relationship of domestic breeder duck isolates in Korea.